


an absolute defining sense

by preromantics



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Zach shrugs. "I'm pretty sure plebeians like you, who require so much caffeinated sustenance before the afternoon, can't handle any sort of fucking this early in the morning." </i></p><p><i>Chris laughs after a pause. "Words," he says, waving a hand. "You wish you knew for sure."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	an absolute defining sense

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 8/20/2010.

Zach's apartment in New York has a balcony in the back, looking over a small brick-tiled courtyard below and a row of buildings behind, the backs of stores and a few windows. 

The apartment hasn't felt like home yet, not without Noah or Harold or the feeling that Zach could go blind and still know where everything was -- all the things he considers 'home' back in Silverlake. 

Except, today it feels more like home than it has since he moved in. There are still boxes of clothes in the hallway and bags from various stores with kitchen necessities that he hasn't unpacked. The living room still only has a couch and a television that hasn't been hooked up to the cable yet, with a wireless router in the corner of the room on the floor, surrounded by a sea of wires.

He still only has one set of sheets for his bed that are over-due for the washing machine, the double-decker apartment size of which he has in the bathroom, not yet connected to the water main. He still only has two pillows, even though he likes to sleep with four (two double stacks). 

Yet, today when he walks out of his bedroom, walks out to see Chris in his kitchen in only his boxers, bent over a pile of styrofoam and cardboard with a new coffee maker in the middle, squinting down at it --

Well. He almost feels like maybe his new apartment could be home. At some point. 

Chris turns when he hears Zach clear his throat, trying to throw off the early-morning tiredness. "How have you been living without a fucking coffee machine?" Chris asks, somewhat slowly, like his jaw isn't working right. (Chris, Zach knows, takes pleasure in knowing, is not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.)

Zach shrugs. He's been going down the street every morning for coffee, to this little cafe with a pretty shitty selection of blends, but they know him by name and they know what he orders already, so it's not too bad. "I usually grab some on my way out," he says, grinning despite himself at the despondent look Chris throws his way. 

"You know," Zach says, "some people can functionally walk out of their apartments without caffeine."

Chris gives him a blank look, rubs lightly at the skin under his rib -- so shirtless, muscles moving, and Zach is so past the point where he makes himself look away (he just deals with it) but early-morning-sans-coffee is a little too taxing on the part of his brain that actively works to resist everything about Chris Pine. Okay, maybe he gets Chris' point. 

"Idiotic people don't have caffeine in the morning," Chris says. "Also probably monks, but they are self-sacrificing and shit, so they don't count."

"Wow," Zach says, words deliberately heavy, looking away from the expanse of Chris' chest to his face -- lips, fuck, no, eyes, Zach can function just fine -- "you are so intelligent in the morning, I forgot."

Chris narrows his eyes, but he grins, wide and bright and it goes straight down Zach's spine. "Fuck you, too," he says, just as bright as his smile. 

Zach shrugs. "I'm pretty sure plebeians like you, who require so much caffeinated sustenance before the afternoon, can't handle any sort of fucking this early in the morning." 

Chris laughs after a pause. "Words," he says, waving a hand. "You wish you knew for sure."

He walks past Zach, still grinning, and Zach doesn't think about how much he wants to know about Chris' ability to fuck in the morning. 

"I'm going to go steal clothes from your closet and come out looking like the best hipster that ever hipstered," Chris says, his voice fading as he moves down the hallway to Zach's room. Zach doesn't bother letting him know that doesn't make sense -- or telling him he's not a hipster, because it's a dead argument with Chris, who Zach has watched read Keats while propped up in a cafe arm chair with a latte by his side and his glasses sliding down his nose. So. 

Zach had already dressed before coming out to his living room, which was just decent, considering he had a guest sleeping on his couch. (Chris didn't get the decency memo, it seemed, because if Zach had to wake up to Chris in his kitchen, shirtless, every day for the rest of the week Chris was staying, well -- his life was completely, totally unfair.)

So, instead of waiting for Chris to appear in whatever he deemed hipster enough in Zach's closet (Zach didn't want to know almost as much as he did), Zach leaves quietly to go down the street for coffee. 

He brings back four cups in their little container, two each. Black for both of them, except Chris' with shots of espresso and caramel, which he only ordered if he didn't know anyone around. (Zach had seen him chain-down five frappes in an Australian airport Starbucks, looking around like someone would notice him at any time, cheating on the small coffee chains of America with a monster chain and a hideously sickening coffee/ice concoction. 

He'd gotten sick on the plane, too, and Zach had just laughed at him silently and pretended not to notice. Zoe laughed loudly and told everyone she'd seen him in Starbucks, and everyone except Zach made it a big deal.)

  
-

Chris isn't in the kitchen or the living room when Zach gets back, which he can see from the door. The sliding glass to the balcony is open, though, so Zach steps out with his cardboard coffee-cup holder. 

Chris is -- not really dressed from Zach's closet. Zach walks quietly, so Chris doesn't turn from where he's leaning against the balcony rail, looking out at the buildings in front of them, at the gray-blue sky above that Zach has come to associate with city mornings. He's wearing his own jeans, a pair of black denim that are entirely too tight against his ass, fitted perfectly down the line of his thighs but baggy with little creases at the knees and ankles. He's also wearing a cardigan, a big one from Zach's closet that he'd bought for around the house, knitted and long. It falls down halfway across Chris' ass and spreads out over his shoulders unfairly, just perfect across them where it's baggy on Zach's back. 

Chris turns -- Zach hopes he didn't make a noise, god, his impulse control is seriously weakened -- and grins at the coffee in Zach's hands. He steps forward to grab one, easily. "Are you this good to all your New York guests, or just me?" he asks, taking a long, greedy sip from his cup. 

Zach tracks the movement of Chris' swallow, the line of his throat, but he's distracted because Chris isn't wearing a shirt under the cardigan at all. It's just open against his sides, the dark navy of the knit falling and parting against the paleness of his skin where he's a little bit golden, like he'd been running down by the beach again. 

Chris is talking and drinking and swallowing, "I seem to remember you making me get my own coffee when I'd stop by in Silverlake, is the city making you soft?" Talking and swallowing and it's almost indecent to have him out on the balcony, his jeans low on his hips and his stance relaxed, pressed against the balcony railing now, head tipped back for each sip of his coffee. 

"Zach," Chris says, loud like maybe it's his third or fourth time saying it. Zach blinks. 

"Wow," Chris says, when Zach looks up, rolling his shoulders back and trying not to think. "You need to drink your coffee, see, you were completely zoned out then. And don't tell me about any mediating bull, that was legitimate zoning out from lack of caffeine."

"Do you always talk this much?" Zach asks, obliging Chris' request and taking a sip of his coffee. "I forget."

"You forgot me so easily?" Chris asks, voice pitched deliberately low, sad. Zach rolls his eyes and doesn't watch too closely as Chris moves, lounging down on the cheap plastic chaise that had come with the apartment. 

They drink silently for a while. Zach doesn't reflect on how his balcony seems brighter, less creepy looking out at the backs of other apartments, more like part of his home. 

"Just so you know," Chris says, minutes into their silence, both on their second cups, "I'm actually a really good lay in the morning."

Zach does not do a spit take (he remembers workshopping spit-takes in college, always stupid and gross, and he's never actually had to use it as an acting technique, or in real life, but this is a close thing,) but he does swallow wrong. His eyes water. 

"Without caffeinated sustenance," Chris amends, "in case you were wondering earlier."

"I wasn't wondering," Zach says, keeping his voice neutral and easy. He was so,  _so_  wondering. 

"Right," Chris says. He stretches out on the lounge, his back arching, his chest pushing forward -- Zach can not deal with him for a week in his little apartment. 

"You really need to buy cushions for this," Chris says. 

"Working on it," Zach says, and he manages to leave the balcony before Chris can do anything that might make Zach accidentally-on-purpose jump him. (The image of pressing Chris further down the plastic lounge, the sky bright above them, licking the taste of gritty downtown coffee out of his mouth and then dragging his lips down the wide, open, shirtless expanse of Chris' chest -- the image is enough to make Zach leave. Or go insane. Or something.)

  
-

  
When Zach gets back from rehearsal in the evening, Chris is on his couch. It's not that Zach didn't remember Chris would be in his apartment (oh, he'd remembered, with startling clarity all through out the day, and probably added details like the sun flecking light off the individual strands of Chris' hair -- sometimes Zach wondered if he tortured himself on purpose subliminally), it's just that he forgot to prepare himself. 

"Hey," Chris says, automatic from where he's stretched out on the couch. Shirtless. God fucking damn. He'd somehow hooked up Zach's cable, which is actually nice since Zach hadn't gotten around to it. 

"What are you --" Zach starts, but he recognizes the movie. 

"WE has a marathon of Meg Ryan movies," Chris says, leaning up on the couch so he can turn and look at Zach by the door. "Remember when romcoms were good?"

"No," Zach says, although he's not sure what he's saying no to. When romantic comedies were good? Watching a marathon of romantic comedies with Chris all night?

Zach goes for a shower instead of contemplating it. When he walks back out into the living room, credits are playing on the screen over a commercial. 

Chris grins at him, eyes a little squinty. "I wanted it to be you," he says, deadpan, "I wanted it to be you  _so badly._ " 

"Says Prince Nicholas Devereaux," Zach shoots back. 

"I wasn't a prince," Chris says, easily. 

"Oh," Zach says, because he can play, "but you so are."

  
-

  
Zach wakes up late because he can. He misjudges, though, and it's 11:30 already when he rolls out into the living room, and he has rehearsal at noon. 

Chris is on his couch, in a shirt -- Zach isn't sure if he's thankful for that or not, it's too early to tell -- watching TV. 

There is a cardboard cup of coffee on the counter, which Zach grabs -- still warm on his palm. He pictures Chris getting up in the morning to grab coffee for them both and grins a little to himself before he can take a sip. 

"Do you even have any work to do out here?" Zach asks over the countertop, at the back of Chris' head on the couch.

"Not really, no," Chris says, turning around. "You're welcome for the coffee run, you owe me $3.64."

"Add it to my tab," Zach says. He doesn't actually know why Chris is in the city for a week -- he has a meeting or two, Zach knows, but nothing that would justify a week in Zach's apartment. 

"If I told you I came out just because I missed your stupid face, would you believe me?" Chris asks, his face and tone missing joking entirely. 

"You spout lies all the time, Christoper," Zach says, drinking too much coffee at once. 

"Well it's true," Chris says. Zach looks at his face, waits for the punchline.

"I have to go to rehearsal," Zach says. "I'll be back later."

Chris nods, doesn't grin, and stretches back out on the couch. 

Zach lets the elevator open and close four times before he finally gets inside.

  
-

  
When Zach gets home (home has become the word at the forefront of his mind, now, instead of 'back to the apartment' or 'back to where he's staying'), Chris is playing Scrabble by himself on an over-turned cardboard box by the couch. (Zach really does need to get some more furniture.)

"I bought you Scrabble Deluxe as a housewarming gift," Chris says, by way of welcome.

"It's probably in bad taste to use the gifts you give," Zach says, dropping down on the couch next to him, pleased more than he should be.

"I gave you the gift of my presence," Chris says, turning too close to Zach, their thighs pressed together, "I thought that was a big enough gift. This is a bonus."

"Your scale of gift-giving is a little off," Zach says, but he's tired and can't really find it in himself to protest. He studies the words Chris has laid out on the board. All of them are seven letters or more.

Chris shrugs next to him; Zach feels it across his entire body. "I may have cheated a little against myself."

Zach laughs, of course. 

"I --" Chris starts, "in case this morning didn't help, I. Really have no reason to be here."

Zach turns to him, doesn't want to look directly at Chris but can't help himself. 

"I'm here for entirely selfish reasons," Chris continues, "I even wrote down a list of why this was a bad idea."

"You're not even a list person," Zach says, entirely not what he's thinking at all.

Chris grins at him, smaller than usual. "I'm changing," Chris says, "who knows what sort of person I am?" 

"Not me," Zach says, honestly, completely enthralled by the way Chris' tongue comes out to wet his bottom lip, then the top, a methodical motion. 

"I think I have a pretty good idea, though," Chris says, like they are having some different conversation, sort of far away. 

"Enlighten me," Zach says, like he's having the same far-away conversation, too. 

He expects Chris to open his mouth with a quip about enlightenment, or maybe Trek, but instead the only thing Chris' mouth does is press forward against Zach's own, not skilled or rough or any of the things Zach has ever thought about it -- just there, warm, a little dry, and real. 

Zach pulls away. "Chris," he says, low, nothing else. 

"I can physically see when you strain not to think about me," Chris says, his voice low and the breath accompanying each of his words a ghost on Zach's lips, "and I think you should stop."

Zach sucks in a breath through his nose. Worse things have happened to him -- he's not usually gifted with what he wants when he wants it. "Gladly," he says. 

Chris grins wide. "Fuck yes," he says, which is so -- Zach doesn't even know. He's overwhelmed with all the things he wants to do, wants to think, wants to over-think and analyze, except Chris is pressing him back against the couch cushions, which is not how it's supposed to go.

Zach surges up with his mouth and then his whole body, probably inelegantly, taking Chris' mouth with thrusts of his tongue while he tries to maneuver them both on the couch so Chris is under him. 

"I take it my over-analyzing of the past two years wasn't incorrect and you're on board with this?" Chris asks, while Zach settles over his hips. 

"Why are you talking?" Zach asks, grinning down, entirely pleased with the picture Chris makes against his cheap-Swedish import couch cushions. 

Chris grinds his hips up and around, hard, rough with the denim, and presses his back up against the couch. "Better?" he asks, as Zach rolls his eyes back, hissing between narrowly parted lips. 

"Much," Zach agrees.

  
-

  
They don't get off with their pants still on, but it's a near thing. Chris gets the bright idea to shove down Zach's jeans and underwear to at least mid-thigh, wraps his hand around both their dicks, and makes little noises that devastate Zach in the best-worst possible way. 

Zach doesn't even care that Chris is in one of his shirts when they both come all over it. 

"You really don't have anything to do while you're here?" Zach asks, once he's reasonably sure he can work words again. (Alright, mildly sure. Same thing.) 

"I threw together a few meetings the day I left, just in case you got suspicious," Chris says. "I didn't really have a plan."

Zach drags his lips along Chris' neck, because it's in reach, and he can. "If I drag you into bed to fuck you," he says, "when we wake up in the morning, will you require coffee before I fuck you again?" 

Chris' breathing starts and stops for a moment; Zach can feel the change under his lips. "Helpful, but not required," he says, voice gritty and low and vibrating. 

"If I wake you up by blowing you?" Zach asks. 

"Fuck, I -- Zach," Chris says, sitting up too-quick and rolling off the couch. Zach grins, wide and tries to school his face into something not resembling whatever bliss is all over it. 

"I'll take that as a not required, then," Zach says. Chris rolls his eyes, and Zach takes a moment to press himself along the line of Chris' back before Chris grabs his arm to drag him forward towards the bedroom.

  
-

  
Surprisingly, or, not surprisingly -- Zach isn't sure how much he wants to own up to in his mind right now -- his apartment feels foreign and not like home at all again once Chris leaves for the airport. 

They've got a handful of months between them, but they also have phone calls and sporadic visits -- Zach has to go back to check and make sure Joe hasn't accidentally killed Noah and Harold once in a while, after all, and Chris can figure out things to do in the city in-between his play and shooting. 

"I'm stealing your awful sweater," Chris says, with his luggage by the door, walking out of Zach's room in the navy knit. "I'm also stealing some other things, but I didn't make an inventory or anything."

Zach smiles despite himself. "You'll just have to come back and return them when you can," he says. He's not sure what to say, exactly, besides,  _stay_  and  _don't leave_  -- and he didn't even watch any romcom marathons, that was Chris. Chris just addled his brain. (Nothing new, it's been two years now with no signs of stopping.)

Chris takes the safer route and doesn't say anything at all, but they kiss long enough in Zach's doorway that leaving almost becomes a problem, and Chris' lips look obviously and unfairly ravaged when the elevator doors close behind him.


End file.
